This disclosure relates to a gas turbine engine blade and its cooling configuration.
A gas turbine engine uses a compressor section that compresses air. The compressed air is provided to a combustor section where the compressed air and fuel is mixed and burned. The hot combustion gases pass over a turbine section to provide work that may be used for thrust or driving another system component.
The construction and fabrication of airfoils for use in gas turbine applications are an extremely costly endeavor. Typically turbine blades and vanes are constructed through investment casting processes that utilize a core within a shell in which molten metal is poured and solidified. Due to the extremely harsh environment in which turbine airfoils typically operate, superalloys are typically employed due to their superior strength at high temperature. Single crystal nickel alloys are often used at high pressure turbine locations to allow for extended operation at high temperatures with low risk of creep failures due to the combination of high centrifugal loads and high temperatures. Further, most airfoils in these environments are actively cooled, requiring intricate interior cooling configurations that route cooling air through the airfoil.
The advancement of additive manufacturing to create metal parts enables for extremely detailed, intricate and adaptive feature designs. The ability to utilize this technology not only increases the design space of the parts but allows for a much higher degree of manufacturing robustness and adaptability. It enables the elimination of costly manufacturing tooling and only requires three dimensional definition of the part. However, the current state-of-the-art in additive manufacturing does not allow for the creation of single crystal materials due to the nature of the process to be built by sintering or melting a powder substrate to form.